Small Cheer And Great Welcome
by Jeanne Marie
Summary: First comes "I Talk Of Dreams", then "When The Hurlyburly's Done", and now this one. Eames finds himself adopted at age thirty-three.


"So, they're evicting you in the morning."

"Indeed." Eames grins.

"Idle curiosity," Arthur says, sticking his nose in a book. "But what did you blackmail the doctor with?"

"Oh, haha."

"Well, just look at you," he says in the brusque near-monotone that Eames thinks of as singularly Arthur. "Shadow of your former self. Anyone watching you leave won't exactly be filled with confidence in the healing capacity of this place."

"Very d-" He smothers a cough with the back of his wrist, ignoring the vicious twinge under his left ribcage by dint of what feels like long practice. "Very droll, Arthur. You know, I'm not sure that's particularly funny when it's so close to the truth."

Over the top of his book Arthur looks at Eames askance, as if to say, 'Oh, you _are_ a mess. You've lost track of who you're speaking to.'

"Yes, what was I..." Another cough. Another twist of pain. Fuck. He'll never again be a normal person who wears clothes and doesn't wish desperately for opiates on a regular basis. "What was I thinking? Ascribing you with a sense of humor."

"Well, you were deprived of oxygen for a few minutes there."

"I was," Eames agrees. "Yet I still know all the words to..." He stares out the window, momentarily preoccupied by a bird in flight.

"Yes," Arthur asks.

"I, um. Oh, I was going to say this Cliff Richard song, but I can't-" He yawns and regrets it immediately. "...remember what it's called."

He hears Arthur laugh from far away. "So where will you go after tomorrow, Eames? Mombasa?"

"No idea." Sleep drags him away, causing him to miss what, if anything, Arthur has to say to that.

On Tuesday Eames spikes a fever. The wound is still healing nicely and he doesn't seem to be in any more pain than usual, so likely it's the exertion. Arthur did warn him against flying the day after his release -"You are all very, very kind people, but I am getting the fucking hell out of this country if I have to sprout bloody wings"-, but as he tugs and prods Eames from the hotel in Christchurch to his own flat in Hong Kong, he manages to refrain from saying I told you so, even once.

Eames is slumped against him on the sofa, radiating heat through several layers of woven cotton. Arthur would tell him to shove off, but the journey has sucked the life out of him as well and he assumes that Eames is already asleep.

"You remember...um," Eames says, his tone quiet and thoughtful. "Cairo, a few years ago. The projection you caught me having a coffee with. Brunette with John Lennon glasses?"

"Cairo." Arthur rewinds. It was their very first job together, so the memories are a bit sharper. "...Mm. Somewhat. She seemed too smart to be your type."

"She was." Eames laughs, but it's as thin and melancholy as Arthur expects from the use of past tense. "My sister Katrina. An aspiring writer. Clever. Cleverer than I could ever hope to be. Except... when it came to men." He's too wrecked to hold back the groan that comes on the heels of a cough. "Horrible fucking taste. I didn't... didn't see him do it, but I told the police I did. She came home with bruises often enough... And he did confess almost immediately, so I was right after all. Didn't send an innocent man to prison when I was fourteen."

Arthur says nothing.

"Cairo was only my third extraction. I didn't quite know how to navigate things." His head drops onto Arthur's shoulder in a way that seems mostly involuntary. "She's popped 'round a few times since then, but I don't stop to chat any more. Mucks me about. I never want to wake up."

"Morgan probably would have been smarter," Arthur says, slowly. He's never spoken to anyone about this. "But I never got to find out. She died the day we were born." And if she did have a name, it probably wasn't Morgan. He's never seen a grave or a birth certificate, so he has no way of knowing. No one would have even told him that she existed if the social worker hadn't been the type who expressed all of her thoughts out loud. ('Oh, you poor dear. Losing a sister and a mother. ...Well, at least we don't have two of you to place now. Probably would have been separated anyway.')

"Twins," Eames asks.

"Apparently."

"God, you are a right downer, Arthur."

With a roll of the eyes, Arthur eases off the couch, making sure that Eames doesn't fall. "Get some rest. I don't want to have to take you back to the hospital in the morning. Those places are a nightmare when you don't speak the language."

"Kiwi is not English," he protests thickly. "And I did just fine in Christchurch."

It is with a small burst of pride that Arthur later remembers this moment. Everything is telling him to pat Eames on the head like a deluded child who needs validating, but he doesn't do it.

Cobb says the funniest things sometimes. Not necessarily funny ha-ha, more like funny completely out of left field.

"I hear Eames owes you a suit," he says.

Arthur raises an eyebrow, uncaring that Cobb can't see it over the phone. "I can't even begin to think of who would have told you. Does your son's pre-school teacher have hidden depths?"

"Lalita El-Beshti."

"Really. I didn't realize you two were acquainted."

"We worked together a long time ago." That sounds like code for 'Before Arthur'. He wonders if she knew Mal, and muses that they would have hated each other. At least, Lalita would've hated Mal. Mal had a way of effortlessly commanding all the attention in a room. Entitled in her own, subtle way, Lalita would not have been a fan of that. "Doesn't explain how she got my phone number..."

Well, he isn't accusing Arthur of having given it to her. Arthur doesn't even have his current one. He could have asked for it before Cobb disappeared into a normal life, but he chose not to. Cobb is the one who seeks out Arthur. Their relationship doesn't work in reverse, or at least it hasn't for a very long time. "Something tells me she didn't track you down to gossip, Dom."

"She wanted a recommendation. Someone to watch her back. You would be her first choice, but you're on sabbatical."

"I'm going back to work soon."

"So he's all right then."

Arthur takes a moment to parse the concern in Cobb's voice. For years, the man couldn't get past his ever-narrowing tunnel vision to show interest in anything that didn't directly concern him. A robber baron from Tokyo with more money than a skyscraper full of gods made a phone call and now Arthur has to get to know his old friend all over again. Deja vu from when Mal tested gravity. Cobb is forever undergoing paradigm shifts and changing into different people. Jarring doesn't even begin to cover it. "He's... getting there."

"That's good."

"Yeah." By getting there, he means that Eames is sick, and slow. He sometimes passes out after a particularly funny television program (and they're in Asia, where a lot of the media is hilarious, even if just by accident). Cleaning up after himself is something of a foreign concept, and there are few things more trying than a capable, physically fit young man who is feeling boxed in and pissed off at the world because of it. Still, he _is_ improving, little by little. And he's started cooking to earn his keep.

If Eames had been shot before the Fischer job, Arthur wouldn't have stayed with him. His primary concern would have been getting Cobb out of the area because he couldn't always be trusted to do it himself. Everything else would have occurred in the background.

He's still mulling over that thought when Cobb speaks again.

"Do you ever think about Nash?"

"Not really, though I won't be forgetting him any time soon. He tried to trade our lives for his own."

"I'm sure Cobol gave him plenty of opportunities to regret it before they put a bullet in his head and threw his body off a bridge."

"You're not blaming _yourself_ for that."

"No," Cobb says, too quickly.

Arthur waits. This Cobb actually wants to speak when something bothers him.

"Just." Arthur imagines him pushing at his forehead with the tips of his fingers, something all iterations of the man have done in times of frustration or regret. "Maybe it didn't have to happen that way."

"I think it did." Whether he's conscious of it or not, Cobb needs assurance that he didn't come back from the other side of the looking glass having turned into a monster, and Arthur is more than happy to oblige. They absolutely could not have pulled off the Fischer job with Nash. Limbo would have swallowed them all whole. "He's the one who chose his fate, not you."

Then this Cobb, the free man and single father, asks if Arthur needs anything.

"No," Arthur replies. Strange, but he's starting to like Cobb again, on his own merits this time rather than because of the memory of who he was before. "Thank you. But I've got everything under control."

"Of course you do." He can hear the smile in Cobb's voice and imagines that it's even kind of fond. "But save this number, just in case. I don't see myself needing to change it in the near future, but if I do, I'll let you know."

For someone without a milliliter of creativity or inspiration in his soul, Arthur places a surprising amount of importance on sunsets. He has to, considering the view from his balcony.

"You know, I think that cityscape is the one thing that's kept your cabin fever at bay," Arthur points out as he closes the sliding glass door and takes a seat. "I should tip my broker."

Eames coughs. By this time the pain is more like a pull. Barely noticeable.

"I've got a line on a job," Arthur continues. "A big one. Could take weeks."

"Have you?" The puddle of disappointment in his stomach is both naïve and unwelcome, and Eames is not pleased with himself at all. They both have lives to get back to.

"Mexico City." Arthur leans forward in his chair, elbows on knees. "Are you up for it, do you think?"

Fuck it. He outright beams. "I'm willing to find out," he says.


End file.
